


At Last

by Penstrokes



Category: Super Science Friends
Genre: 2099 compliant, Gen, not my best work but I'm feeling antsy and this was in WIP forever, post 2099
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 21:53:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16250516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penstrokes/pseuds/Penstrokes
Summary: Z3 is defeated and the super science friends are unofficially disbanded. Curie leaves the world's future in Einstein and Ada's hands.She's decided to take her hard earned reward- reuniting with Pierre. Even if it's for a short while, she's finally back.





	At Last

The world was saved and while no doubt it would need saving again in the future, Marie Curie was done. The world was going to need someone to help guide it and build it a new. She was not in that group of people. Einstein and Ada were more fit to oversee such a grand project. She was done, she’d finished her duty, her obligation. Poland was free. The world was free.

 

There was no one left to hold her back in this far future she did not belong, that she was never intended to see. Marie wasn’t sure about the others, but she had decided that the moment Z3 was disposed of, the super science friends were unofficially disbanded. No reason to stay. No enemy to fight and aside from lingering around and waiting for the next one, they were no longer needed. They were all too old to keep doing this, aside from maybe Einstein and possibly Tapputi.

 

Marie wanted to spend the last of her days with the people she missed the most, her family. She knew that if she went back to the earliest time possible, they’d only have two years together. Between her age, doing research that she already knew the answers to and raising their daughters, two years would be like nothing to them. Would she even be able to hold them again in her state? Before the super science friends, she’d been safe enough to hold her daughters, to hold Pierre. Years of fighting and and honing her powers to destroy hoards of Nazis and robots had rendered her too dangerous. She had needed to be and now she was a weapon with no purpose.

 

No target.

 

Maybe there would be a ‘thanks for your service’ at the end of the day but they were all irrevocably changed. Darwin, forever trapped between forms, Tapputi was a mash up of bodies, Churchill and Tesla dead-there was no telling what had happened to Freud in the aftermath of the battle that took two of their teammates’ lives.

 

Maybe he was still alive. Maybe he had joined Tesla and Churchill on the other side, where ever souls went after their time was up.

 

She didn’t hate him anymore, she hadn’t for a while. Not since saving the world from Z3 had been their driving force for the past decade.

 

Z3, she was triumphant over her having dealt the killing blow to him but the satisfaction of victory, the sense that it was all worth it at last had left now. Marie had nothing but numbness to her.  She wanted rest.

 

Einstein was the least changed by all this, having born into war. Maybe peace would change him, maybe he’d stay the same as he was now, having grown more mature in a shorter period of time than he should have.

 

As Curie turned to leave through the time portal one last time, she looked over the future London that lay in shambles and ruins as humanity began to take itself back.

* * *

  
  


Pierre was in shock as he saw his wife, now more unrecognizable than he’d last saw her. To Marie it’d been far too many life times since then.

 

“Hello, Pierre.” She greeted as warmly as her tired voice could muster through her radiation suit.

 

“Marie, you’ve just left. What happened?” He asked, voice rising with concern. His eyes were drawn to her suit, the bright light of her radiation.

 

“It’s been far too long since I’ve seen you, talked to you. I’ve missed you more than you can imagine.” Marie replied, her voice was sweet, gentle and on the verge of tears.

 

She had already done her mourning. She’d done her mourning when she’d learned of his fate, of their lives together being cut short. She’d mourned her absence in her daughters lives. She’d cried for Einstein when he’d died and when he’d come back.

 

She would do no more crying out of grief or anguish. From now they would only be tears of joy and happiness. This was her reward now and she would reap it.

 

“How long have you been gone? What’s happened to you?” He reached out to touch the suit, stopping short of his fingertips lightly brushing against the metal. Pierre didn’t push it, didn’t test how powerful her radiation had become.

 

Marie took him by the hand. She could not feel the soft warmth of his skin against hers but it was for his own good. This was as close as she could get and it was more than enough.

 

“Time is a funny thing, Pierre. It’s been over a decade since I last spoke to you. It’s only been mere moments since you’ve spoken to me.” She laced his fingers with hers, contemplating pulling in him for an embrace.

 

“We still have time to talk about where I’ve been, what I’ve seen and done. All I want to do now, is look at you. Talk with you. Almost two decades with only your memory and our love to keep me going.” How Marie longed to kiss Pierre, to have one serious, deep kiss between the two of them. She had never stopped loving him, even after all the time and distance between them. She knew it was for his own good, for her heart and sanity to maintain this barrier.

It would be enough.

 

It would have to be enough.

 

“Irene and Eve, how are they? I want to see them.” She changed the subject to their daughters. If radium and polonium were the scientific representation of their love, then their daughters were their physical representation of it. Marie already knew how great they would become, even with their absence. Their mother’s disappearance in the name of fighting for freedom and their father’s deaths had shaped them to become great. Irene, who would follow in her parents’ footsteps. Eve, who would venture into the world of words and journalism.

 

Marie could not have been prouder of them. They had done so well, even with their parents’ absence. Marie was never going to leave them again. So many lost years of family, robbed of the right to experience her daughters lives.

 

Pierre went to fetch them. Irene looked at her mother in confusion, not at all how she’d remembered her just moments before. Eve, was still sleeping.

 

“Mother?” She called out in cautious wonder.

 

Marie broke out into a grin. She had longed to hear those words for so long. “Yes. It’s me. I’m back for good.”  

 

She bent down as best she could in her radiation suit- it was their safety as well as hers and this fact rang even more true now than ever- and hugged her.

 

“Why are you in there? Are you sick?”

 

“I had to save the world.” She said simply.

 

“The world? Marie-?” Pierre interjected, alarmed.

 

“It’s a very, very long story.  I’ll tell you in due time.” She assured him.

 

Time. How her perception had changed oh so drastically of it. These little moments, these big ones too, how it meant everything and yet nothing at the same time. She’d visited the beginnings of humanity and civilization to it’s subjugation and it’s resurrection. She’d passed by the lives of countless people. Royalty. Peasants. Rich men and beggars. Time would eventually erase everything.

 

Two years.

 

Marie had two years to spend with Pierre, two years to decide if she’d try and change his fate. Two years was not a very long time. Not before and certainly not now.  It was short and it would be-could be bitter sweet, but it was still hers.

She would savor it as long as she could. 


End file.
